Unit 4 Study Questions
Which early hip-hop song used the term "rapper" for the first time and reached the top 40 in the pop charts?
"Rapper's Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang
What is the first rap song to depict the social realism of life in the South Bronx?
"The Message" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
What was not an influence in the formation of British heavy metal?
?
In which city did the group Black Sabbath form?
Birmingham
With which earlier androgynous artist was Annie Lennox often compared?
David Bowie
True or False? Hardcore metal fans openly approved of Van Halen's sound experimentations on their song "Jump".
False, Halen's decision to play the main melody on a synthesizer rather than an electric guitar was an important symbolic and aesthetic issue for hardcore metal fans, who viewed the keyboard synthesizer as a somewhat questionable, perhaps even effeminate instrument.
True or False? Prince's early musical output was quite slow, averaging well over a year between albums.
False, one of the first things that strikes one about Prince's career is his amazing productivity. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, when most superstars released an album every two or three years, Prince's output averaged over an album per year.
In which group had Peter Gabriel previously been lead singer?
Genesis
The album Graceland was recorded on how many continents?
Graceland was recorded in five different locations on three different continents.
Which MTV spin off, launched in 1986, became the most-watched show on the channel?
Headbangers' Ball
This heavy metal band featured twin lead guitars and set a standard for the S&M fashion of 1970s metal:
Judas Priest
What are two elements that were key to a regional underground rock scene in the 1990s?
Large population of college students and student-programmed college radio stations
What did Madonna do prior to becoming a pop star?
Madonna first emerged out of New York's thriving dance club scene.
What is NWOBHM, and which band is best associated with this?
New Wave Of British Heavy Metal; Iron Maden
What early funk group does Dr. Dre frequently sample on Snoop Doggy Dogg's music?
Parliament
Where did Prince begin his musical career?
Prince's career developed in the regional metropolis of Minneapolis, Minnesota. He had been making music professionally since the age of thirteen, as an occasional member of his father's jazz trio.
Which early rap group's sound was a dense, multilayered web that often sampled famous speeches by civil rights leaders?
Public Enemy
Which album bumped Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA out of the top position on Billboard's pop album chart?
Purple Rain
The band R.E.M's reinterpretation of the punk aesthetic in their style of indie rock incorporated which other style of music?
R.E.M.'s reinterpretation of the punk aesthetic incorporated aspects of folk rock—particularly a ringing acoustic guitar sound reminiscent of the 1960s group the Byrds—and a propensity for catchy melodic hooks.
Rap was based on principles derived from music and verbal traditions from where?
Rap is indeed based on principles ultimately derived from African musical and verbal traditions.
Which rap group regularly fused their sound with heavy metal guitar sounds?
Run D.M.C; the "beats" produced by Rubin and Jam Master Jay were stark and powerful, mixing digitized loops of hard rock drumming with searing guitar sounds from heavy metal.
Who did Prince say his guitar playing was most like?
Santana
How long had Tina Turner been in the popular music limelight prior to her hit "What's Love Got to Do with It" in 1984?
She had been in the popular music limelight for over twenty years!
Which band is not part of the "Seattle Sound"?
The Seattle Sound artists/bands= Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Elvis Presley, Green River, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, etc.
What was the first completely digital synthesizer introduced to the mass market in the 1980s?
The Synclavier, a high-end (and expensive) digital synthesizer, was introduced to the market in 1976.
What is the main conceptual element, or result, of Paul Simon's album Graceland?
The album explores the concept of collaboration—collaboration among artists of different races, regions, nationalities, and ethnicities, which produced in turn collaboration among diverse musical styles and approaches to songwriting. This provides a conceptual basis for Graceland, to be sure, but Simon's album is quite different from the usual concept album. There is certainly no explicit or implicit story line that connects the songs, nor is there any single, central subject that links them all together—unless one is willing to view collaboration itself (primarily musical collaboration but also, in two instances, collaboration on lyrics as well) as the album's "subject matter." But the idea of an album designed to explore collaboration seems a perfectly logical, if unusual, concept to embrace in understanding Graceland.
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's use of saxophone in the 1980s is a link to which style from an earlier era?
The band even included a saxophone—virtually an anachronism in the pop music of this period—to mark the link with the rhythm & blues and rock 'n' roll of earlier eras.
Which pioneering early hip-hop DJ began mixing with two turntables?
The disco DJ's technique of "mixing" between two turntables to create smooth transitions between records was first adapted to the hip-hop aesthetic by Kool Herc.
In which city can the American roots of techno be traced?
The roots of techno are often traced to the Detroit area, home of Motown, the Stooges, and George Clinton.
What is the second British Invasion of the 1980s?
The second British Invasion of the 1980s began as an attempt to promote record sales by promoting English artists such as Eurythmics, Flock of Seagulls, Adam Ant, Billy Idol, and Thomas Dolby.
What is the top-selling album in history?
Thriller
True or False? Many multiplatinum rap records are filled with inside references to particular neighborhoods, social groups and networks.
True, it is important to understand that hip-hop culture began as an expression of local identities. Even today's multiplatinum rap recordings, marketed worldwide, are filled with inside references to particular neighborhoods, features of the urban landscape, and social groups and networks.
True or False? The term "alternative" associated with Ani DiFranco, Lauryn Hill, and k.d. lang has to do with the fact that feminist values play an important role in their work.
True, the term "alternative" to these performers has to do with the fact that women's perspectives—and feminist values—play an important role in their recorded work.
What is "toasting" in hip-hop?
a form of poetic storytelling with roots in the trickster tales of West Africa
What is the "devil's interval" referred to in Black Sabbath's music?
a musical interval of a tritone expressly forbidden in the Middle Ages
Which instrument plays the main melody on Van Halen's song "Jump"?
a synthesizer
What did the PMRC succeed in doing to all rock music in the 1980s that is still present today?
advocated for the creation of a labeling system that would warn parents of explicit content on recordings
What are "breaks" in dance records?
brief sections where the melody was stripped away to feature the rhythm section
The band The Dead Kennedys is an example of which early 1980s style?
hardcore
Van Halen's 1980s music is in which category of metal?
pop metal
Which format of music delivery surpassed vinyl records for the first time in history in the early 1980s?
prerecorded cassettes
What differentiated groups like Cream, Led Zeppelin, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Blue Cheer from other groups in the late 1960s as forbearers of hard rock?
technological advances that enabled new heights in sonic disruption
Which earlier experimental group influenced Sonic Youth?
the Velvet Underground
What does Bruce Dickenson say County & Western music has in common with "heavy rock"?
their own radio stations and their own subculture
What was the first video to launch on MTV?
"Video Killed the Radio Star,"
What is not considered an element of hip-hop culture?
? Hip-hop culture, forged by African American and Caribbean American youth in New York City, included distinctive styles of visual art (graffiti), dance (an acrobatic solo style called breakdancing and an energetic couple dance called the freak), music, dress, and speech.
All the following were differences between West Coast "new school" rap and "old school" New York hip-hop except:
? NOT West Coast content was angrier and darker; The sound of "new school" West Coast rap differed from "old school" New York hip-hop in a number of regards. The edgy, rapid-fire delivery of Melle Mel and Run-D.M.C. (old school) remained influential but was augmented by a smoother, more laid-back style of rapping (west coast/new school). The dialects of southern California rappers, many of them the offspring of migrants from Louisiana and Texas, also contributed to the distinctive flavor of West Coast rap. And if the verbal delivery of West Coast rap was sometimes cooler, the content of the MCs' recitations themselves became angrier, darker, and more menacing.
What is not a reason for the 11% drop in record sales in the early 1980s?
A number of reasons have been adduced for the crash of the early 1980s—the onset of a national recession brought on by the laissez-faire economic policies of the Reagan administration; competition from new forms of entertainment, including home video, cable television, and video games; the decline of disco, which had driven the rapid expansion of the record business in the late 1970s; and an increase in illegal copying ("pirating") of commercial recordings by consumers with cassette tape decks.
Why was there a cultural boycott on performing in South Africa in the 1980s?
At the time, a United Nations boycott on performing and recording in South Africa was in effect as part of an international attempt to isolate and ostracize the government of that country, which was still enforcing the widely despised policy of apartheid (separation of the races).
Which band set the standard as the first proper heavy metal band?
Black Sabbath
These were the cofounders of Def Jam records:
Both Raising Hell and Licensed to Ill were released on a new independent label called Def Jam, cofounded in 1984 by the hip-hop promoter Russell Simmons and the musician-producer Rick Rubin.
Who was Madonna's popularity only second to in the 1980s?
From the late 1980s through the 1990s Madonna's popularity was second only to that of Michael Jackson.
What was Dr. Dre's distinctive hip-hop production style called?
G-Funk
Which style of music present on Peter Gabriel's song "Sledgehammer" excited him the most as a teenager?
Gabriel described "Sledge-hammer" as "an attempt to recreate some of the spirit and style of the music that most excited me as a teenager—60s soul."
In which area of the U.S. did hip-hop begin?
Hip-hop was at first a local phenomenon, centered in certain neighborhoods in the Bronx, the most economically devastated area of New York City.
Which is not an element that Prince and Madonna share?
Madonna's hit recordings—like most pop recordings—depended on a high degree of collaborative interaction between the singer, the song-writer(s), the producer, the recording engineers, studio session musicians, and others. But many of Prince's hit recordings, inspired by the early 1970s example of Stevie Wonder, were composed, produced, engineered, and performed solely by Nelson himself, many at his own studio in Minneapolis (Paisley Park, Inc.). Despite these obvious differences, however, Madonna and Prince have much in common. Both are self-conscious authors of their own celebrity, creators of multiple artistic alter egos, and highly skilled manipulators of the mass media. Both experienced a meteoric rise to fame during the early 1980s and were dependent on mass media such as cable television and film. And both Madonna and Prince have sought to blur the conventional boundaries of race, religion, and sexuality and periodically sought to rekindle their fans' interest by shifting shape, changing strategy, and coming up with new and controversial songs and images.
Which African American artist/group broke the color barrier on MTV?
Michael Jackson
What does MIDI stand for?
Musical Instrument Digital Interface
Which device was an important predecessor of the synthesizer?
One important predecessor of the synthesizer was the theremin, a sound generator named after the Russian inventor who developed it in 1919. This instrument used electronic oscillators to produce sound, and its pitch was controlled by the player's waving his or her hands in front of two antennae. The theremin was never used much in popular music, although its familiar sound can be heard in the soundtracks of 1950s science fiction films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, and on the Beach Boys' 1966 hit "Good Vibrations."
Which early country artist did k.d. lang imitate?
Patsy Cline
Which two white artists were featured prominently on Michael Jackson's album Thriller?
Paul McCartney & Eddie Van Halen
Whose song "Lady" was the 10th bestselling single of the entire decade of the 1980s?
Performed by Kenny Rogers; written by Lionel Richie
Who were "The Bomb Squad"?
Public Enemy's production team, consisted of Hank Shocklee, Keith Shocklee, and Eric "Vietnam" Sadler.
Who was named "the godmother of alternative rock"?
Sonic Youth's lead singer, Kim Gordon
Which early independent label first signed the band Nirvana?
Sub Pop Records
What was the first rap video to be put into heavy rotation?
The video version of "Walk This Way" was the first rap video to be put into heavy rotation by MTV.
What was one of the first two multiplatinum rap albums?
The year 1986 saw the release of the first two multiplatinum rap albums, Raising Hell by Run-D.M.C. and Licensed to Ill by the Beastie Boys.
Which style of metal, started in L.A., most represents the most excess and debauchery?
Thrash Metal
True or False? Iron Maiden purposely included backwards messages intended for the American Moral Majority in their music.
True
True or False? Tina Turner's hit song "What's Love Got to Do with It" contains autobiographical elements for the singer.
True, "What's Love Got to Do with It" was originally a film version of her autobiography.
